Love Binds
I’m continuing my adventures through the Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery series, but we’re heading directly to book four. I can’t be sure what exactly went wrong with my reading of the third in the series, but something definitely went wrong. Could be that I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Could be that the story was as disjointed as it felt to read it. Whatever the case, I’m glad I persevered because things really found their rhythm with the fourth book, Love Binds.
It is impossible to talk about Love Binds at all without spoiling the previous books. So be warned! Everything hereafter is a spoiler.
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We ended the third book, Love Lies, with Hanna choosing Mark, mating with him and then transforming into a werewolf. When Love Binds opens, Hanna has not managed to transform into a werewolf again and it’s been months.
She and Mark are having massive amounts of sex (most off page, some on page) but she’s not falling pregnant. (Not that she necessarily wants to be pregnant, but she isn’t on birth control so maybe she does want to be pregnant? This part is a little vague.)
Morrison is cursed because he was made into a vampire when he had a broken heart and so now he must kill Hanna to free himself.
So in this story, we have the Morrison problem to solve and Hanna’s coronation as alpha to attend.
Yes, I know! There’s a lot happening here!
Taking into consideration that this entire series is a bit unhinged (mostly in a good way) and the events of this installment are similarly unhinged, the story did really hold together. The different subplots interwove with each other coherently and the narrative had great pace to it.
Mark is Mr. Swoonworthy in this book. Previously, he was predominantly silent and uncommunicative, if scorchingly hot. There are still some clashes between him and Hanna, but there are a lot of lovely tender moments and Mark says some of the most romantic things. I was too swept up in the moment to take notes as I went so you’re just going to have to trust me on that one.
I do want to warn you that there is a death in the novel which is quite sad, but it was so heavily foreshadowed that by the time this character finally shuffled off this mortal coil, I was already so used to the idea of them being gone that their absence didn’t bother me much. They were also such a caricature that I couldn’t bring myself to mourn their absence.
Overall Love Binds is a lot of fun to read and considering the shitshow we are surrounded by, a bit of fun goes down a treat. I look forward to reading the last in the series.
– Lara
Hannah Harvey returns in Love Binds, the fourth installment in the hilarious and steamy Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery series by USA Today bestselling author Cynthia St. Aubin!
For Hanna Harvey, happily ever is just the beginning…of a hot mess. Now mated to darkly dangerous but irresistibly seductive werewolf, Mark Abernathy, she’s finding that life isn’t the endless cheese and whisky fueled boinkfest she’d imagined it to be. Plagued by terrifying nightmares of a mysterious entity bent on her destruction and drowning in her new responsibilities as the alpha female of the werewolf world, she’s begun to doubt that she really is the heir. And she isn’t the only one.
When certain werewolf factions refuse to acknowledge Hanna’s rule, what begins as a clan rivalry threatens to erupt into the first shifter war in centuries. Which is like, the worst. As is the return of Hanna’s former flame and neophyte vampire, Detective James Morrison. Bitter and out for blood (literally), he’s made it his business to exact his vengeance on all non-humans…Hanna included.
Hoping to stave off the shifter Apocalypse, Hanna and Abernathy travel to The Gathering, where a mysterious figure from Abernathy’s past reveals a closely guarded secret with the power to break not only her heart, but their sworn bond as mates. With the fate of the werewolf world resting squarely on her bony shoulders, Hanna must now decide to trust the wildness within, or abandon the shifter world forever.
Paranormal, Romance, Urban Fantasy
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